Toronto
ON:Toronto poet Mat Laporte has been producing increasingly interesting work over
the past year or two, the result of which is the chapbook Billboards from Hell (Toronto ON: Ferno House, 2012), currently enjoying
a second printing. Billboards from Hell
is Laporte’s second chapbook, after Demons
(Ferno House, 2010). What intrigues, in part, is the range of structures
Laporte attempts throughout the short collection of poems, really stretching
out the possibilities of the work. Not all the poems achieve what they attempt,
but when they do, they strike perfectly, such as this poem, with a title
borrowed from W.G. Sebald:

The Rings of Saturn

I fear I maybe put too much stake in books

What is loneliness but the mind’s estrangement

from the chest? Breaking loose from sheer inertia

and the capital of youth is angst. It is Canada Day.

The mall is closed. Is everybody with me? A bridge

through the physical world is taken with frequent stops

for snacks. It has been a beautiful dream. Though

the body is open to contemplation, it is, in a sense

excluded. Nothing beats a cohesive statement

As in a theatre, the actors appear

to complete the great catastrophe of this piece.

You are an uprising in yourself.

jwcurry once told me that bpNichol wasn’t a
great poet because everything he did worked, but that he was willing to fail,
and there is something to be admired by any writer constantly willing to
stretch out their own skills. Laporte is willing to stretch out and attempt,
and there is a great satisfaction to seeing just how clearly and openly his
poems attempt, from list poems to short lyrics to the pared-down sequence of
the title poem. Not everything might work, but sometimes one can achieve
magnificent things that couldn’t have been possible otherwise, an aesthetic
openness Laporte shares with Ottawa poets Amanda Earl and Pearl Pirie. I am
enjoying these poems, and am very interested to see where Mat Laporte’s writing
continues to go.

Judgement Day

The day is a dog without skin

There is a constant kick in the ceiling

Red stool, black book, grey cup, red stone

Potlights or portholes into oblivion

I could stare at this monkey for millions

Watching him dance is like

The most beautiful expression of

I will never love you, signed, the Truth

As if naked hysterical guacamole

I’m sweating hot dogs on the floor

DJ Unidentified Flying Organ vs. DJ Ball-Shaped Head

The State is an illegible tank

Each day plows instead of no-head

Nowhere. Buckets of mitochondria,

Prehistoric man, and the whole shipful of meaning

Pulling in to Main St. Station

We shouldn’t even sleep

We should all just scream all the time

Windsor
ON:
Produced for a reading Dennis Cooley did in Windsor in March, 2012 is every tuesday (Wrinkle Press, 2012),
produced by Nicole Markotić’s Wrinkle Press (see their relatively new website here). The stretch of the three pages make it difficult to tell for certain if
the chapbook is made up of a single poem composed out of small fragments, or
three distinct pages, part of an ongoing tweak of Cooley’s to not title certain
of his pieces. The poem begins with the title, writing: “every tuesday / also thursday
every thursday too / and sometimes wed / nesdays hang // my heart in the window
/ my shadow on the snow[.]” Cooley’s poem (or poems) jam, enjamb and twist, rife
with puns and slips that make one groan as much as breathless, turning lines on
coins far smaller than a dime. As in much of Cooley’s writing, every piece ties
into structures far larger than they could ever appear, stretching far wider
and deeper than even the consideration of the trade volume, which makes me
wonder what this fragment might eventually be part of.